In June 2025, Dr. Benson was one of five pianists on the faculty of Wuhan Conservatory’s 2025 International Piano Faculty Week, in which she presented a solo recital and masterclasses with conservatory students. Immediately following the festival in Wuhan, she then presented masterclasses, lessons, and performances in multiple other cities in China, including the Beijing Eastbank Academy of Music and appearances in Changchun, Nanchang, and Chengdu.
An avid chamber musician, Dr. Benson is the Artistic Director and pianist for The Paramount Chamber Players (TPCP), one of the premier chamber music ensembles of the Appalachian Region and in its twenty-first concert season. Since taking her role with TPCP in 2020, she has organized and performed on over two dozen concerts with the ensemble, including a professionally recorded and entirely virtual 2020–2021 concert season.
Dr. Benson is deeply passionate about arts leadership and interdisciplinary collaboration, and her innovative projects have been sponsored by multiple grants from the University of Tennessee and Rackham College at the University of Michigan. With her colleagues at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, she co-founded the Knoxville International Piano Festival and Competition, attracting seventy-five young pianists and over two dozen guest artists in its inaugural year. In another recent project exploring the intersections of artistic media, she commissioned seven new pieces of art from graduate and undergraduate visual art students, each new work created directly in response to a solo piano piece. Her work on interdisciplinary studies was featured in a lecture titled Painting Sound: A Case Study in Fostering Creativity and Collaboration Across the Arts presented at the 2023 National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy, the 2025 College Music Society National Conference, and the upcoming 2026 Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) National Conference in Chicago.
In demand as a masterclass clinician and adjudicator, Dr. Benson places great importance on encouraging and supporting the next generation of musicians. She recently presented masterclasses for the Blount County Keyboard Teachers Association, the Evelyn Miller Young Artist Series, and the Knoxville International Piano Festival, working with a diversity of age groups from elementary students up to collegiate artists. Dr. Benson has also served on the jury for multiple competitions, including the Heida Hermanns International Music Competition, the Knoxville Symphony Youth Orchestra Concerto Competition, the Tennessee Music Teachers Association Piano Competitions, and the Alabama and Florida Music Teachers Association Piano Competitions. She will also serve as guest artist and judge for the 2026 Emory University Young Artist Piano Competition.
Dr. Benson has additionally garnered numerous triumphs in over a dozen international and national piano competitions, having won top prizes and recognitions in the Heida Hermanns, Seattle, Kerikeri, Walled City Music, Teresa Carreño, and Thousand Islands International Piano Competitions. She is additionally the winner of the 2026 Stecher and Horowitz-MTNA $25,000 Gateway Prize for the Advancement of the Arts.
She holds degrees from the University of Michigan, Eastman School of Music, and Northwestern University. Her teachers included Arthur Greene, Nelita True, James Giles, and Chih-Long Hu.
Dr. Benson currently serves as Assistant Professor of Music, Piano at The Pennsylvania State University, where she matains a studio of piano majors, minors, and doctoral students and teaches piano literature. She previously served on the faculty of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
American pianist KATHERINE BENSON is recognized as an important artistic figure of her generation through her performances, teaching, and passion for arts leadership.
Dr. Benson is in demand as a soloist, chamber musician, adjudicator, and teacher, and has performed across the USA and abroad in China, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand. Highlights from her most recent concert seasons include Saint-Saens Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Pennsylvania Chamber Orchestra, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the University of Tennessee Symphony Orchestra, Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos with the Johnson City Symphony Orchestra, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Clara Schumann’s Concerto in A Minor with Spectrum Orchestra, as well as solo recitals in Michigan, Georgia, Tennessee, West Virginia, Washington, and North Dakota.
